An activist organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to publish them publicly.
Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development
Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models.
An entity known as Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as performer and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its full inventory.
“We have located and disabled the malicious user accounts that engaged in illegal scraping,” said a company spokesperson.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party scraped public metadata and used questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Group's Stated Mission and Concerns
Spotify does not think the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
The group asserted the audio files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a method of sharing large data files online.
“Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
Model Development and Copyright Debate
A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be used for training AI models.
“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the AI industry, so this accessed music is almost certain to be used instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to develop its AI models.
The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at scale”.
Intellectual property law has emerged as a battleground between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Government Proposals and Reactions
In the UK, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and development told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
